The following article was published in the Calgary Herald on January 7th under my byline. You can read it here, along with comments, or below. A carbon tax allows us to clean up after ourselvesLike most people, one of the life lessons I learned at my mother’s knee was that
Continue readingTag: carbon tax
Views from the Beltline: A carbon tax—an ethical imperative
The following article was published in the Calgary Herald on January 7th under my byline. You can read it here, along with comments, or below. A carbon tax allows us to clean up after ourselvesLike most people, one of the life lessons I learned at my mother’s knee was that
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 1: The taxman cometh
Here in the Glorious People’s Republic of Alberta, we have begun the process of saving the Earth, 4.5 cents a litre at a time. The NDP government introduced its Climate Change Plan Jan. 1 , slapping taxes on the stuff that we use to drive our vehicles and heat our
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: The Winter of Discontent over the Carbon Tax
Alberta’s carbon tax, lauded by economists and experts and derided by opposition conservatives, came into force on January 1, 2017. From photo-ops at gas pumps to outright climate change denial, opposition to the carbon tax has been nothing short of hysterical… Continue Reading →
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Past PC taxes disappear down conservative Memory Hole amid apocalyptic claims about similar NDP policies
PHOTOS: Then finance minister Robin Campbell and premier Jim Prentice explain their plan to increase taxes in March 2015. Criticism was mild. Below: Premier Ralph Klein and Stockwell Day, who was Mr. Klein’s provincial treasurer in the late 1990s (CBC photo); Wildrose MLA Heather Forsyth, who was interim Opposition leaders
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney – just visiting Alberta? – piously congratulates Michael Ignatieff for Order of Canada
PHOTOS: A screen shot from the Conservative Party of Canada’s vile “Just Visiting” ads, which were designed to undermine then Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in the spring of 2009. They worked. Below: Dr. Ignatieff, who on Friday was awarded an Order of Canada, and Jason Kenney, candidate for the leadership
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Pipeline File: NDP’s ‘social license’ approach worked where Conservative shouting failed, it’s that simple
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Kananaskis, Alberta, in April 2016 (photo by Chris Schwarz, Government of Alberta). Below: Anti-pipeline demonstrators in British Columbia (Rabble photo by Alyse Kotyk). They may not find it reassuring that Alberta conservatives are praying for their success. Without
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Wildrose whip condemns racist imagery after the fact? That dog won’t hunt! Jason Nixon should have walked away
PHOTOS: A shot from the Twittersphere of Saturday’s anti-carbon-tax protest in Red Deer (grabbed from @IamBunbury). Below: A close-up from the photo of a person who appears to be Jason Nixon speaking to one of the protesters, and a photo of Mr. Nixon from a Wildrose event in 2015. Below
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Wait, I’m Pretty Sure I Voted for Some of These People. Haven’t You?
Sorry, my bad. I was thinking of horses. These are plainly backbenchers. There’s a proposal to levy carbon taxes on meat and dairy products. The photo shows the carbon emission apparatus. Surcharges of 40% on beef and 20% on milk would account for the damage their production causes people via
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brian Jean goes full Trump for the Wildrose masses: Total disaster! We need to Make Alberta Great Again! Believe me!
PHOTOS: I tell you, it’s a total disaster! Believe me! Brian Jean speaks with members after his Trump-like Friday evening speech at the Wildrose Party’s 2016 AGM in Red Deer (CBC photo). Below: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose former speech-writers may soon be able to find productive work
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Pigs will fly before the fantasy that Ottawa’s carbon tax ‘invades provincial jurisdiction’ will ever persuade a court
PHOTOS: Who says Jason Kenney is full of baloney? These guys do! And they’re the Fathers of Confederation! Below: PC leadership candidate Mr. Kenney; federal Liberal Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr, MP for Calgary Centre; and Brian Jean, leader of the Wildrose Opposition in the Alberta Legislature (Wildrose.ca photo). Ottawa’s
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: Will Canada’s national carbon price clean up our climate mess?
Monday, October 17, 2016 Canada will soon have a national price on carbon. West Coast has been calling for carbon pricing for over twenty years – putting a price on harm to our atmosphere is a good first step in dealing with the gigatonnes of fossil fuel pollution that Canada produces
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jim Stanford writes about the obvious problems with globalization as it’s currently structured – and the need to meaningfully take into account the public interest before anybody other than the investor class can be expected to participate in the process: The reality is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Libs’ carbon price rollout managed to maximize the resulting sound and fury while signifying little actual progress. For further reading…– Marc Lee offered a reality check on the minimal effect of Justin Trudeau’s price announcement, with reference to Marc Jaccard’s study here (PDF). And Karri Munn-Venn
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Michelle Rempel and the Madness of Harperland
It could only happen in Alberta, or in the battered petro-state that Stephen Harper bequeathed this country formerly known as Harperland.For on the day that our parliament endorsed the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The House of Commons voted 207 to 81 to endorse the Paris agreement on climate change tonight, after
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Stephane Dion and his Green Shift are vindicated. More Hard Work needed though.
Vindication took eight years, but it finally showed up for Stephane Dion: “The government proposes that the price on carbon pollution should start at a minimum of $10 per tonne in 2018, rising by $10 each year to $50 per tonne in 2022.” And then the kicker. “If neither a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rachel Notley’s demand for a pipeline quid pro quo demonstrates the steely side of Alberta’s premier
PHOTOS: Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley. Below: Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s first Progressive Conservative premier, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his father, the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau. GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alberta Rachel Notley’s decision yesterday to make support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan put a national price on carbon conditional
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Notley searches for her Lougheed moment by demanding oil pipelines for Trudeau’s carbon tax
Demanding the federal government help “break the landlock” and support the construction of oil pipelines from Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley and Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips drew a line for Alberta’s support of the Justin Trudeau government’s proposed national carbon… Continue Reading →
Continue readingAlberta Politics: OMG! Energy industry faces ‘existential threat’ from Hollywood, ‘ever-growing matrix of activists’
PHOTOS: Brad Wall, increasingly the Mr. Disagreeable of Confederation. Below: Calgary’s Glenmore Reservoir as dreamed of by supporters of the Saskatchewan Party of Alberta. Actual Calgary beaches may not appear exactly as illustrated, either with reg…
Continue readingIn This Corner: Stuff Still Happens, week 23: The year of the fallen icons
The Oxford English Dictionary defines icon as ‘a symbol or graphic representation on a screen of a program, option, or window’, which doesn’t work until you look at the second definition, which is ‘a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration.’ There are few words in English usage today more […]